It is now common for an individual to regularly use multiple computers from multiple different locations. A typical user may have a first computer at the office and a second computer at home, for example, as well as a portable computer, and a web-enabled mobile device such as a smartphone. To have ready access to the user's content, it is desirable for the user to share files between these multiple computers. Additionally, it is common for a user to want to share files with other users and to enable multiple users to make changes to the files.
One way to share files between multiple computers and multiple users is to transfer the files from one computer to another, for example by emailing a copy of the document from one computer to another. Alternatively, services offer users the opportunity to store their documents “in the cloud”—that is, on servers accessible to users via the Internet or other communication network.
From time to time, users may edit documents to which they have access. When a file is edited in different ways from two different computers at an overlapping period of time or at a time when one or more of the computers is offline, conflicting versions of a file may be created.